Snow in montreal

This is my first full winter in montreal. I arrived in march here during the end of winter. 

The first snow fall of the season was on Diwali (it was a mix of snow and rain). Then it really snowed on 25th November.  It was a nice walk on the fresh snow and a slow drive back home. All of that got washed away. It was cold. The winter is here.  It is going to be white for the next 4 months. 

Last week (09 Dec), we had the first real snowfall of the season. Lot of snow, i guess more than 10cms of snow. Then the temp dropped and all the snow froze and there was freezing rain. We did not venture out in the morning as we did not have winter tyres (mandatory in quebec starting this winter) and stayed at home. All the snow froze and we had around 1-2 cms thick ice on the car. We had to scrape the ice from car. It was a tough job lasting for over an hour. If freesing rain happens daily, then it will be too much of work than i can take. Lucking freezing rain happens only once or twice during a year which is good to know. 

After that we have been brushing away the snow on the car daily. Today the temp rose and there was rain and then in the night, the temp start to drop again. Due to this the melted snow became a layer of ice and all the roads had a glossy look on them. Hard to walk but too nice to enjoy. 

The temp has varied from +6 to -18 (+ wind chill) till now. 

Coming to the winter wear, we are coverted from head to toe except for the face. Once you wear the full winter wear, you dont feel much of the cold. Only the face can feel how cold it is out there. Only ice and melting ice makes it hard for driving and also walking on it. Sambhalke walk on ice. 

Never fill air in the car tyres with bare hands at -12 degrees centigrade even if you are going to be out for under a minute or two. I learnt it the hard way. My hands were red and numb for a good 10 minutes. 

We also went to ski bromont. We were there on the opening weekend and as bunny hill was not there to start practicing, we took to the top of the mountain and came down the green trail. The snow was being groomed constantly but the ice was becoming ice. This was making it hard to stop with the skis. Lot of screeching and not much grip to cut through the snow. We went up and came down twice. The first run took around an hour. I was skiing after a gap of two years. The second run down was quicker even though i got too tired. There  was lot of pressure on the knees and the legs as it was hard to stop to slow down. We had fun. It was good being back on skis. 

Made a century

I scored over a hundred yesterday in bowling. I have tried many a time to cross it starting from 17 and reaching 99 couple of times. I try to throw the ball straight at the pins knocking none , few , some , all - at different times. Some amount of spin and the ball goes straight into the gutter.  But the balls keep getting heavier after the first game.  

Coming to the other bowling (cricket) , i can only throw not bowl !!

Ravi's bday

Today is Ravi Vidhani's birthday. Prashant Paliwal and I started to plan a surprise for him. It started with the buying of an extra bday cake box as suggested by Prashant. We returned to my house with the Chocolate Caramel  cake and an empty box. I assembled the empty box. Then we took  a cake lid (plastic one) and filled it with cake rusk. Then we thought of putting some (fake) money (Ravi is a Sindhi :-)) . The first option was some chillar (pennies) and then we put some houses/bungalows from the Business game

 (Monopoly). Then we thought of putting paper

 money from the Business game of Pratik Doshi. I had only coins in my game so we preferred the paper money. Then suddenly it came to my mind that we have a printer and we can print some fake money. It will be more realistic. 

Last week i got a printer along with 4 other friends and i was yet to open it. We started to look for A4 sheets and could only find some one sided ones.  So the paper was there. What money to print  ? We turned to google. I remembered reading about the inflation in zimbabwe and how millions of dollars of zimbabwe currency is of not

 much use. We looked for the pics and got theseand printed them.  Then we also printed some indian currency (1000,500,100,50,20). Then it was time to cut them. Mahesh Jadhav who was helping us all along started to cut them while i had my dinner (choley - they came out really nice today). Then Mahesh arranged the notes in a circular fashion (less hifi than this). Then we decked the millions of dollars on top. Then we put a big page with a collage of notes as a cover.  In addition i wanted to give ravi a 501 or 101 (ek sau ek). So i printed a big 500 ka note (which turned out to be exactly like the original one) and a big One (ek rupee) ka note. I put them in my purse. Then we were off to Ravi's home. We parked the car a little far on the road and walked and reached his house just in time. Right at 12. 

Mahesh J entered the house with the money cake. While Prashant and Vivek Garg were giving cover, i brought the actual eatable cake in and put it on the stairs. Then the money cake went into fridge with everybody thinking it is the cake ! 

Then the wishing started and he got a few calls. Then the kicking started. Three of us lifted him and there went the first round. Lot of kicking. I only held one of his legs up in the air while others held him. He is heavy and there is lot of body movement. I do not kick any body these days. The days of kicking in college

 are long gone. I was lucky that i got off with just a full body lift by Tarun Setiya on my birthday. Everybody spared me :-) . But for ravi it was not the case. Soon the second round started. I lifted him up on the leg side. Had i held him for some more time, i would have dropped him. Ravi is heavy. Bix came and gave support and i went back to holding one leg up. There was lot of kicking - some touching by Prashant , Kicking by Mahesh Mehta , Tarun. 

Then we got the fake cake. Then Ravi opened it and saw all the fake money. Surprise !! Then i seriously took out my wallet and took the 500 ka note. He thought it was real for a second. The big ek rupee came next.  Then he realised both were  fake. Then the real money showed up in the cake lid - the pennies. Beside them was the 'cake' (rusk cake). 

He even broke one of the pieces (cake cutting) and gave to Vivek. It was fun. 

Then the real cake came out.  After his face and hair tasted the cake, he was on his way to get himself cleaned and got ready for the third round. Then came Ravi Vutla, he wanted a share of the hitting - revenge time :-). Then the third round followed.  Now Ravi's body needs lot of cushioning for the next few days. 

While we were sitting and analysing who hit and how much, Abhyudoy sarkar made a comment.  He said i lifted ravi today and tomorrow i will get sick as my hands will be paining.  Funny. I actually took a sick leave after i went back to gym for two days and did more weights.  See my body is sensitive to too much of physical work. 

Then we dispersed.  I will attach the pic of fake cake when i get it from Mahesh Mehtha (our DSLR dude). 

Happy Birthday Ravi. Have a great day. Good night.

Update: Added the below pics

Truck driving

Last week my colleague Bixapathi Varaganti was moving. So he hired a 14 foot truck. We helped him with the move.

Luckily i got to drive the truck (Image). It was big. Initially it took a while to get adjusted to the height and the size of the vehicle. But after sometime, it was a comfortable ride. It was fun driving it. We did not hit the highway though.

One more vehicle adds to the list of driven vehicles after the 4-door sedans and mini SUVs.

Status update

Again i have not been keeping my blog updated.

After a flawless successful deployment of my last 5 months work, i am going little bit relaxed on my work load at office.

Life is moving on in montreal. Caught up with some movies. Hancock - just a time pass movie. Watched Wall-E - really really liked the pixar movie. The Dark Knight kept me excited all the movie but i dont think it deserves to be the top # 1 movie on IMDB. Mongol ended up to be a love story while we were expecting a war movie. Got to learn more about Genghis khan's life . The scenery was good though. Latest is Singh is Kinng , a OK comedy with not much sense in story. Atleast my visit to Egypt got refreshed. Never would the pharoahs have thought in their wildest imagination that Katrina Kaif and ... will come and dance a bollywood number on their grave.

Learnt a lesson - Never watch IMAX experience movie from the first few rows. We ended up little late (around 7 pm) for the 7 pm show. So we got to sit right in front of the big imax screen. A bullet shot from one end of the screen travels faster than you can move your head and see where it went on the other side of the screen. Also your neck starts to pain. The sound feels gibberish. The point to be taken is to reach the theatre half hour before and take your seat for movies which are going to be houseful.

Also went and met Kannan Krishnan (a prof. in univ. of montreal) here in montreal today. I was supposed to meet him around 4 months earlier. but today just happened to be the day. I went to his place and had a nice long warm chat about a lot of things. I look forward to meeting him and his family again sometime.

Joined gym again and after two days of hectic workout, letting the body to relax. Let's see how long i continue to go to gym this time - a week , couple , a month , couple ??

Moving weekend

It was moving weekend last week. Lot of people in montreal move around July 1st. You will see lot of stuff being sold/bought on craigslist during this period.

We helped our friends move to their new house this weekend. It was tiring. There was two truck (17'' U haul) loads of furniture being moved and i also got my sofa to my home as well during the same time. Still my body is aching from the hardwork we did on saturday. I need to get some rest this week to be back to normal.

Jazz fest has started in montreal. Need to listen to some live jazz before it is over !

Life in montreal

It has been over 3 months since i moved to montreal. I can say i am kind of settled now. I have the basic amenities - a place to live and rest (rented an aparment) , a means of conveyance (bought a toyota echo car) , a means of survival (started to cook in the apartment). Need to get some other nice to have stuff.

Work kept me busy during the past three months. I am having more personal time during the last few weeks during which i finally moved out to my apartment and started to live out of my place. Till then my colleagues Ravi Vidhani and Prashant Paliwal took real good care of me in their house. I was lazying around with work and not getting any personal stuff done. (as usual)

The time to settle down is totally different from cyprus and montreal. In cyprus, we got a fully furnished apartment. All you needed to buy was a car and you are fully settled to lead a normal life in cyprus. It is different here. You need to shop around here and get all stuff needed to set up the house. It is fun but also time consuming.


Weather has changed in montreal. All snow is gone and summer is finally here. Once in a while we do have showers or thunder storms but that is needed to chill it. It can get really hot here like in india.

I have started to explore the place - very little. I had been to mount royal and saw the city during the night and day from the top. Other than that drove to kingston and toronto. It was nice to meet some old amdocs colleagues after some time.

I went with some of my new friends (new colleagues) to toronto and niagara during the victoria day long weekend. We went to wonderland in toronto - there were nice thrilling rides. We could cover only one section of the park. I guess we would need two more trips to complete the rides in wonderland. Then we went to marineland in niagara falls - the free fall ride was really nice. You could see niagara falls from the top. We did it three or four times as there was no real bheed. It was fun. I will be headed soon to the amusement park in montreal - getting myself a season pass.
We went to Ottawa to see the tulips. There were many and it was nice. Lots of colors.

Also it is good to see your pay check come in every two weeks. Month seems to be long now :-)

Coming to food, you get all indian stuff here in montreal. I ate drumsticks after a long time here in canada. You get more stuff than in cyprus. You get everything here just that you pay in dollars. You have lot of indian restaurants around. I now go often to Jolee restaurant which is a sri lankan tamil restaurant. I ate kothu roti there. Really liked it. Very nice dosas. The sambhar taste keeps varying.

We went to saravana bhavan in toronto and really enjoyed the food. It just tastes so good as always. Nothing comparable. Awesome as always.

You have many temples in montreal. Some have the gopuram as well - like proper temple structures in india. There is pooja , aarthi. The same calmness exists here as well. We occasionally go to the temple.

The city is a vibrant one. You should go to downtown to really feel the vibe.

What else.. as always i am clicking with my camera and piling up the images in my hard disk. I will upload them some time soon (hopefully).

I am back in Ravi and Prashant's place and we cooked a lot and for lot today evening and now i am being called upon multiple times to come and have the dinner. So signing off this post now.

That's mostly the updates from my end here in montreal. Sorry blog, I will try to be more regular.